On Grapes and Guitars

Brett - bad tides a'rising

2011-03-07T11:51:00.004-06:00

I admit it, I hate the taste of wine that has been impacted by brettanomyces spoilage bacteria. I say spoilage because I firmly believe this is a flaw, despite what certain winemakers, terrior-suckers and wine-pundits may have you believe. After experiencing 3 flawed bottles from different areas of the world in the same week, I am not only "afeared" of what is to come in my cellar, but for the wine industry in general. I do not like wine that smells and tastes like wet dog fur dipped in pooh. Just not for me. I believe this is a flaw because, let's face it, most winemakers would prefer to avoid it impacting their wine (maybe Ch. Beaucastel being an exception). Yet they make excuses or claim it is supposed to be there when it does occur and often refuse to take the admittedly draconian measures necessary to remove it from their winery. Syrah and certain Bordeaux varietals (Cab Franc, Malbec) seem to be particularly susceptible to contamination, although this is my observation and I have no empirical data to support this and have not talked to winemakers or profs from UCD regarding my unscientific survey. Here is what I think about brett:

1. If you rail against overuse of oak, oak chips, vacuum alcohol removal, must watering, sugar addition, overripe grapes and many of the old and modern winemaking techniques used to manipulate the grape, you should also rail against brett contamination. It is not part of the grape nor the yeast used to ferment the sugar to alcohol. Rather brett is a SPOILAGE BACTERIA that is introduced to the grape, must or finished wine somewhere along the process that alters the wine downstream of the bottling process by chewing on residual "stuff" left behind after bottling. It may be natural, but it is not part of the fermentation process in much the same way that oak, oak chips, de-alcing and the other things I note are natural but not part of the fermentation process. It is also not controllable by the winemaker once the wine is bottled, which makes it that much more nefarious.

2. Winemakers, pundits/wine writers and the trade are complicit in allowing brett to flourish. Clearly it must be difficult to remove brett from wine. But those involved in this industry have made it their jobs to convince wine drinkers that the smell and taste of dog hair dipped in shit is okay, even desirable, in their red wines. Horsepuckey. The same thing has happened with TCA. The trade has thrown up their hands and said well it is too prevalent and there is not anything we can do about it, plus, most people don't taste it anyway. I would argue that most people just are not educated as to what a flawed wine is and will drink it to get hammered because even flawed, the wine tastes better than the MD20-20 they drink most of the time. Further, the well-being of the trade depend on people drinking wine and if people rejected the wines with brett, which I believe is somewhere in the neighborhood of 25% of all red wine made today, they would be without a job. The French try to hide behind the word "terrior" and guys like Reynolds, Tanzer and Sir Bob use "smoked meat, leather or game" instead of calling it what it is, brett-impacted flawed wine. I guess it is understandable they want to preserve their livelihoods, but doesn't my money mean something as well?

3. With all the well-meaning but over-reaching vintners attempting to use biodynamic, organic and other "natural" grape growing and winemaking procedures, brett is going to get worse, probably much worse, before it gets better. I read an article from a vintner who tries to utilize these procedures but does not advertise or certify because he understands that sometimes you have to stomp on a wine to make an excellent, stable, drinkable product. That sounds wise to me. But now we have every half-trained, hair-brained, sometimes well-intentioned grower and winemaker touting their use of non-interventionalist, organic or biodynamic procedures and the fact of the matter is, most of these are either unqualified, untrained or unwilling to do the hard, hard, hard work to make sure that this lack of intervention does not turn into spoiled wine after a couple of years in the bottle. I am convinced that in a few years, collector drinkers like me will be opening up spoiled bottle after spoiled bottle, contaminated with brett and other spoilage organisms that flourished because the grower refused to sensibly use sulfur or copper or other "interventionalist" means to ensure grape health and the vintner refused to add fining agents, sulfite or mechanical purification procedures to ensure a stable product in the bottle. Mark my words, this is going to blow up big, sort of like "ensuring physiological maturity" has blown up in California where wine after wine, wonderful to drink in its just released youth, begins to show baked, cooked and pruned notes after a couple of years in the bottle.

4. How can animal fur dipped in shit taste good or even be good for you to drink? Look, brett is most often caused by a spoilage organism growing in a bottle after it has been sitting around for some time. When I drink a flawed bottle like the recent Mantakata Providence 2002 I drank a week ago, my stomach actually hurts from either this bad bacteria or the sulfur comnpound it leaves behind. How can this be good for you, despite what the vintners in the Rhone have been claiming for years?

5. I rarely see this flaw in wines from Washington state, Italy, Germany, Austria or South America. However, wines from Australia, California, the Rhone, Bordeaux, South Africa and New Zealand seem to show more and more contaminated bottles. I am not sure why this is the case. I read somewhere that certain grapes like Syrah tend to grow brett on the grapes skins while in the vineyard and this makes it really hard to remove during vinification. Okay, so if this is true, then appropriate fining, filtration and preservative (sulfur) levels must be employed to ensure the bacteria does not ruin bottle after bottle. Why the regions I mention seem to avoid contamination is beyond me, but I find myself more and more patronizing these areas and avoiding the offenders. I suggest others follow suit in order to put heat on the winemakers to get their houses in order.

Join me in railing against brettanomyces contamination in wine. Together we can clean up the industry.

WBW#45 Wine Blogging Wednesday with the WORLD

2008-05-07T21:58:00.006-05:00

2002 Weingut Birgit Eichinger Riesling Strasser Gaisberg

http://www.weingut-eichinger.at/01news_new.html

Although I think that Riesling probably is the queen of all white grapes, I prefer dryer versions such as this to German non-dessert wine Rieslings containing significant residual sugar. Birgit Eichinger is a rising star in an Austrian winemaking world dominated mostly by male winemakers. This Austrian dry Riesling is somewhat restrained and yes, perhaps even feminine. Pale straw in color despite nearly 6 years of age, the nose is floral with perhaps a bit of oilyness to it. There are flavors of quince paste, oranges, a touch of grass and ginger aside a fairly good dose of minerality and acidity. Still quite fresh and refreshing, it perhaps just lacks a best of zest to get it into the excellent category. A very good buy at $10 on a closeout, although I did have at least one of my 12 bottles polluted with TCA.

Friggin' Spoofulated

2008-03-24T22:37:00.002-05:00

Okay, so I am a wino and should join AA. I drink a glass or four every night. So sue me. And I use Cellartracker to keep my wine room up to date. 1200 bottles is not easy to keep organized in my pea brain, you know. So I drank 2003 Waterbrook Melange tonight and was underwhelmed by it. But some knuckledragger writing tasting notes just before me decided to use the word "spoofulated" to describe the wine. Now remember, I read a lot of wine reviews, both professional and amateur, and I have to admit, the word was a new one on me and for some reason it just pissed me off.

So I Googled it. Wonderful how we create new words (verbs in this case) in the English language. It turns out some anus created the word out of nothing at some nondescript point to describe over manipulated wine. First of all, the Melange was not good, but over manipulation was not its problem. But more fundamentally, why does someone have to create a word to describe something they can just describe? Yes, we hear new words all the time and some stick and there is a certain inside joke to be had when the word you create (google?) makes it to the lexicon. But spoofulated? How does spoofulated begin to describe over manipulated wine? I mean, taken out of context, "spoofulated" could be the word my two year old made up for what is in his diaper right now. If you are going to make up a word to describe something easily describable (overmanipulated perhaps?), at least make it have some intelligent tie back to what it is you are trying to describe. Otherwise, you might as well just pick some words my kid babbles and assign them random meanings. J.K Rowling or Tolkien can make up words. It would be a really, really, really long trilogy (or quadrogy?) if he had to describe a hobbit every single time one appears in the story instead of just calling it a hobbit. Wine reviewers not so good on the made up words.

So I do not know why this ticked me off so. Perhaps I am just jealous because I never heard of the word before today or did not make it up myself. But rather I think I am upset about a made up word showing up on community tasting sites without context. These sites truly will live or die by the quality of tasting note they provide to augment the professional gurus (or idiots if you prefer). Alder over at Vinography has already fielded a long discussion on why he thinks community tasting sites like Cellartracker (which of course serves a much greater purpose as a cellar tracking aid) are bound to fail. Idiot use of fake words like "spoofing" or "spoofed" or "spoofulated" or whatever are only likely to hasten that demise. If someone says "ginormous" to me again, or if I see it on another hamburger house commercial I am sure going to throw up, or at least never buy a hamburger from that place again. But at least a fifth grader can understand "ginormous"...gigantic and enormous rolled into one. I get it. But friggin' spoofulated??? Where does that take its roots from? Latin for idiot? If you are going to take the time to review a wine, at least take the time to speak English...for the greater good.

And the HorseStank Goes On and On

2008-02-12T10:35:00.000-06:00

So it is about time that someone at the Wine Speculator other than Jimmy Laube talked about the fatal brettanomyces flaw showing up in more and more wine these days, especially wine older than 5 years old. That's right, Jimmy Molesworth, one of their European tasters, complained politely about brett and in fact stated correctly that it is and has always been a flaw in wine. Off course he called George Brett, he of the something like 8 batting titles and maybe 100 career homers, a power hitter, but who expects a Brit to know squat about American baseball.

But the thing is, he managed to both knock the winemakers and apologize for them in the same article. Shameful. Jimmy M. obviously was trying not to piss off the winemakers who give him free bottles of their wine so while he properly raised the issue, he backed off, equating older brett filled wines with memories of old girlfriends or some BS like that. Basically, he said the brett was okay because it has always been there and he remembers the wine with the stanky brett there. Interestingly, he also talks about of couple of wines that were too close to the barnyard for his tastes.

Come on Moley, take a friggin' stand. No wishy washy its okay because it has always been that way, the vintners are trying to avoid it these days, blah, blah, blah crap. For me, brett is a fatal flaw nearly 100% of the time. I don't know if I am particularly sensitive to it, but with even small amounts I begin to gag. I have often abandoned brett-filled wines at my own loss. This, my friends, is unacceptable. Brett is a flaw and it smells like wet horse hide, or horseshite or wet cardboard or crappy dirt or some other indescribable thing, but it is anything but pleasant, unless of course your nose is hopelessly plugged and you have no sense of smell or taste. You will know it when you smell it or taste it, although you may not identify it as Brettanomyces without someone telling you that is what it is.

It is incumbent on wineries and winemakers, just like the fight against TCA, to remove it from their wine and admit it is completely unacceptable. None of this claptrap about it being part of the terrior of the wine, or improving taste (a lie the French are particulary vested in advancing). Consumers, just like you have voted against TCA with your pocketbook, you must vote against Brett with your pocketbooks. I have recently written off Mouton Rothschild wines because a whole case of '99 d'Armailhac I own is full of the shite. I am very close to doing so with several Aussie wineries. It seems the worst offenders these days are vintners in the south of France, Australia and Bordeaux. I have also had a few American vintners do me wrong. It is clear that aside from poorly maintained barrels and wood, the rush by oenologists and vintners to harvest ever-ripening grapes makes them dramatically more susceptible to Brett spoilage. Why? Riper grapes contain less acid, a natural preservative. Further, these wines often contain low levels of residual sugar, a fermentable for Brett. And these days, minimalist intervention means less SO2 and other preservatives are used, increasing the risk of a rogue organism like Brett taking hold as the wine ages.

But do not accept a flaw just because wineries have a vested interest in telling you you should. Use you palate, your nose and your mind and vehemently reject wines with Brett in them. Only by losing business will these guys really do the right think and rejoin the bottle to eliminate from their cellars and wines.

Like Mushrooms after a Rain

2007-12-19T23:34:00.000-06:00

Did you ever find that your wine collection grows like mushroom after a rain? Do you know what I mean by this? Okay, notice that you can have no mushrooms in your flower beds, nice, clean, whatever. Then you get a couple of days of rain. Several days later mushrooms come screaming out of your ground and you wonder where the hell the spores that produced them came from in the first place.

Well, based on my very unscientific survey, essentially just talking to the voices in my head, I have come to believe that "wine collectors" and especially those of us who drink our wine, not hoard it for future sale at auction, find one day that those wine mushrooms have poked out of the ground and a collection of 200 bottles is somehow approaching 1000. Worst part, you have no idea how it got to be that way.

I can tell you for sure that reciprocal states (thank God for sane wine shipping laws in most states these days) have a lot to do with this. I receive at least six emails per day with the latest, hottest wine, rated 95 by RP or WS, at deep, deep discount. It is really easy to get sucked into buying the price or the rating without realizing your weekly purchases were 2 dozen bottles and $1000 and sheeite, how you gonna pay for that? Before the internet and reciprocal states (like IL where I used to live and my current abodes in TX), you would have to drive down to the local liquor store, supermarket or even visit a winery to make your purchases. That took time, effort and you most importantly, you had to carry the cases to and from the car and sign the Visa receipt with trembling hand. NOT SO ANYMORE.

No, instead I get an email from one of ten vendors spread across at least 5 states (Il, NJ, CA, WA, OR) who already have my credit card on file. Fill out the number of bottles you want, add the three or four digit code on the front or back of the card and magically, in 2 weeks, the wine arrives at your door in styrefoam and screaming "drink me, drink me".

The average family in the us has two wine drinkers or less. So you do the math, even one bottle a night (which may lead to a hangover) and those dozen wines add 5/week to the wine collection. 52 weeks in a year, add in the days you don't pop a bottle (out on business, travelling on vacation, eat out at restaurant, go to a friends for dinner, hung over and afraid of wretching) and you can easily add over 250 wines a year to your collection without even realizing it. That is unless storage becomes an issue. If you have a passive cellar in a basement, watch out. You may get tired from carrying the cases down stairs, but before you know it, 250 begats 500 and you are sitting on 1000 bottles of wine of which half have a two year shelf life and your pants just became a little soiled.

So STOP you say. Obsessive compulsive behavior I say. Yeah, it runs in my family and whether you have it or not, wine becomes that obsessive compulsive thing in your life that grows like a monster and is awfully hard to control. And I know that I am not the only one with this tendency. Just this month old Jimmy Laube of the Wine Spectator (previous readers of this blog, all three of you, know how I feel about them) intimated that he also had this problem. I think true wine lovers with any space to collect will all admit, in their heart of hearts, that it is a problem that is pervasive and almost too hard to control.

MADD members will say it is the alcohol talking. I say NO. Wine is a food beverage, made to enjoy primarily (but of course not always) with a meal and I estimate that well north of 95% of the wine I drink is consumed in conjunction with a meal. The exception may be when I go to a party or a tasting with a wine group but these usually include food, if for no other reason than to ensure I can walk out at the end of the thing.

Without consulting my shrink (I really do not have one, okay), I have to say this disease is really one of too much love of a good thing. You know, you see the review it gets a 95 and is "only" $59 a bottle and it will age for ten years so you have to buy six bottles. Six, twelve times 5, etc., etc. I have found the only way to slow the advance of the disease is to unsubscribe from the emails. Since I do not have willpower yet to do this, the next best thing is to erase them before reading. With this in mind, set an upper limit for your cellar. For me, this is 1300 bottles, give or take, which is all my wine room can hold. Then challenge yourself to go one day, then one week, then one month, without clicking "Purchase Now". I have been working to tell myself there will always be another vintage of the decade or century. If you miss 2005 Chateauneuf, just drink those 2003's until that next great vintage comes around in, say 2010.

It is hard and maybe I need to start a support group to really show progress. My wife hopes not. Running out of cash and space also may curtail activities.

So wish me luck as I do all of you fighting the "mushrooms in your yard". I hope sanity will prevail.

Global Warming will signficantly impact Wine production world-wide

2007-03-20T22:05:00.000-05:00

If you are a wine drinker, you need to be concerned about global warming and its effect on wine growing regions around the world. Whether you are ignoring the facts of man's impact on global warming or you understand the fact that we are contributing signficantly to the natural warming factors already at work in our environment, as a wine lover, you need to be fearful of the future and what it means to your beloved beverage.

You have already seen some of the impact of the warming environment in areas like Germany, which has seen average temperatures jump to the point that they are having a hard time making the fresh, high acid, zippy kabinett rieslings we have all come to enjoy (at fair prices too). The grapes have been getting too ripe, above the kabinett level, and there is no way to make this type of wine with these riper grapes.

I have read projections that within 100 years, wine growing regions south of the latitude of Washington State will be too hot to grow quality wine. Areas like Washington will have riper conditions and will need to switch the type of grapes that they grow. Now you might think "no big deal, just move wine production to Canada and Greenland and Norway". The problem is these areas do not receive the correct amount nor the proper light exposure to produce quality wine. Further, finding the proper soil types and other climate factors (rain levels, timing of rain, etc.) is likely to be difficult if not impossible.

The prediction is that within 100 years it will be nearly impossible to grow high quality vinifera grapes in the US and maybe anywhere.

If that doesn's scare the stuffings out of you, you are just being ignorant. Maybe you won't live to see this but your children and/or grandchildren will. Don't you want them to have the opportunity to enjoy wine as you have.

So do your part, fight global warming, drive a Prius, recycle, support projects to reduce our impact on our environment and push the government to get in the game. Barack Obama has one of the most cogent plans for fighting Global Warming. There is no doubt that the earth will try to heal itself but we must do our part for our children, our grandchildren and to save the vines.

Why wine ratings are a joke (or...the joke is on us)

2007-03-14T21:04:00.000-05:00

I admit it, I am a ratings whore. It seems like I am continually searching out the 94 rated Robert Parker Wine Advocate or the 96 Wine Spectator rated wine that "only" cost $95. Sometimes I get so mad at myself for chasing those whore wines with the knowledge that the three tier distribution system doubled the price of the wine the week before I bought it because they got an advance copy of the magazine with the "high" rating and knew they could get away with taking an obscene price increase because idiots like me will pay for the rating.

Intrinsically I knew there was something wrong with this but I could not put my finger on why. I knew it was not just that I was trusting another person's palate to determine what I thought was "good". It was deeper than that, soul deep. It finally hit me today and it all has to do with the science of the ratings. Screw the fact that people taste differently. The science of rating wines is no science at all.

As a researcher working in the food science area, I utilized statistical experimental design, demanding testing protocol that would yield statistically significant results. Without the proper test design, no statistically valid conclusions can be drawn about your test product. I knew that in developing a new product, I had to be sure to the 95% confidence level that the conclusions I was drawing were right. If I was trying to show that one product was better than the other or if I was trying to draw conclusions regarding the characteristics of my product (subjective (taste) or objective (pH)), I needed to have a statistically valid sampling program so that I tested enough samples to be truly confident of my conclusions.

Now back to wine ratings. There are absolutely NO STATISTICALLY VALID CONCLUSIONS that can be drawn from wine ratings. Parker, Wine Spectator, Tanzer, whomever, they all work off of one bottle, maybe two, provide from thousands, maybe tens of thousands, maybe even millions of bottles of the "same" wine available to us ratings whores. It is pure folly to believe that that one bottle in any way, shape or form represents the batch average of that wine. The chances of it representing the average are about the same as you hitting the PowerBall when the jackpot hits $300 million. Not very good odds, indeed.

What is the cause of the variation and why do you need more than one bottle to draw conclusions. First, the biggest tank you are likely to see in most wine production facilities is maybe a few thousand gallons. Most blending tanks are considerably smaller than this. Even a wine with as few as 100 cases (250 gallons) would like be blended in more than one batch since it was probably stored in 4 or 5 50-gallon oak barrels for aging. This means that most wines are blended in batches, tanks being refilled due to size limitations. At a minimum, to truly have a statistically significant sampling program, you would need to have multiple bottles from each of the blendings, certainly sampled throughout the tank. Add small barrel aging, which is inherently variable, and more bottles would need to be sampled to generate statistically valid results.

But it goes deeper than that. Winemakers know that they have variation, bottle to bottle, caused by the vagaries of blending and mechanically filling bottles as well as the closures used. Mechanical movement of the wine, oxygenation during filling, incomplete or inconsistent flow patterns from tanks and in lines are among the filling issues that contribute variation from bottle to bottle or at best, case to case. Add that to the batch issues described above and closure variation (cork problems and variability) and the number of bottles that need to be tested to have a statistically significant sample size increases dramatically, perhaps exponentially.

This does not even begin to address the statistical issues surrounding a human based measurment system. I admit that it is impossible to develop an objective machine-based system to measure human taste. Maybe in 30 or 50 years, but today, no. I am sure nerds somewhere are workingon it, but I have to believe it is years away. Unlike a machine, human tasters are not all the same and the same taster is not the same from tasting to tasting or even bottle to bottle within the same tasting session. Maybe Jim Laube has a cold or had garlic for dinner last night or has an owie on his tongue. His subjective taste would be changed due to these factors. Palate fatigue is also a common problem, even among highly trained tasters who have been in the business for years. I believe this is why big, huge, overoaked, overextracted wines have become the darlings of the tasting world. Sorry Jimmy Laube and Bobby Parker, but when you deign to taste 30, 40, 50 or more wines at a seating, you know that by the time you hit the 10th, your taste buds are more or less shot. The only wines that could possibly get your attention and score well after that are the ones that hit you over the head with fruit or oak. The germination of the "international style", I feel, was the vintners' response to palate fatigue and their commercial and financial need to have a highly scoring wine to get us ratings whores to buy their wine. The tasters (Parker, Tanzer, Wine Speculator, etc.) are at fault for tasting so many wines at once in a situation that is, at best, untenable, at worst, impossible. And for not demanding statistically significant sample sizes they can be wholly blamed. In their defense (slightly) I understand that huge wine corporation and small winemakers rely on those ratings to get us wine whores like me know what to buy. ARRGGGH How do you win as the consumer?

I have a BS in Chemical Engineering from UC Davis, probably the greatest wine training University in the world (sorry Bordeaux). I wonder what Maynard Amerine or the current faculty have said about the science (or lack thereof) surrounding wine ratings. I hope they have written about it. It is one thing to test a bottle and say that bottle is good. Or maybe tasting a few bottles out of a reasonably small sample, the number of bottles determined by the math, and concluding that based on the scores, that subset of the wine is good. But the more I consider what we accept as "proof" that a wine is good, the more my head hurts and I kick myself in the butt for chasing scores.

So what is a wine whore to do? Good question because it is not feasible to test every wine when you want to buy it unless you are independently wealthy (and few of us wine whores are). The independently wealthy among us buy the ratings anyway and could care less if they make any statistical sense. When you have unlimited resources what do you care what the statistics say? If you don't like it, f..k it, pour it down the drain and get another bottle of something else. So us wine whores have to stop buying ratings. Find producers or regions of the world or wine styles or whatever you like and stick with them.

A perfect example for me is Ridge and Turley. It used to be that any wine Ridge or Turley produced got a big score from the Wine Speculator. Recently that has not been the case. In fact, I think Ridge refused to submit their recent zins to the Speculator for rating because they knew they would get hammered by Jimmy Laube. It seemed to me (and famous vintner Randy Lewis even wrote a letter to the Spectator agreeing with my conclusion) that the Speculator, or Jimmy Laube, had decided that any extracted, high alcohol zin is bad and refused to give them decent ratings, even if they were perfectly balanced, zingy and tasty and deserved the ratings. I had been mad that the wines I was paying good money for were being rated for shit. Now I understand that the ratings mean next to nothing. My palate keeps saying that, by and large, these wines are still excellent and deserve a better fate, no matter what the Speculator says. So I keep buying them because I trust the producers and my taste buds say they are good. Now I have been critical of California Zin, even in this blog, in the recent vintages and I do believe it has been off the pace and variable at times in the 2000's. But there are still plenty of good zins that I have purchased and my taste buds are saying that the wines are improving with age in many cases.

We have to quit buying wines solely based on ratings. I cannot begin to count the hundreds of wines that never lived up to the ratings I purchased. In fact, I would say it is the rare wine that I rate as highly as the experts. This is especially important when you realize that often, the greedy distributors automatically raise the price of any wine that scores a 90, completely ripping off us wine buyers. Now I am not against capitalism, but these suckers are doing it based on a subjective score that we all know is flawed and they were happy to sell the wine at the lower price pre-score. Can you say price gouging? Sound like gasoline to you? Me too.

The truth is that wine ratings can give you a general impression of a wine. But they should never be used for any more than that. We have to realize that wine is a highly variable, highly changeable, highly subjective art form and the best you can hope is that when you get around to drinking it, it meets the taste profile you had hope for when you purchased it. Wine whores of the world, wake up and smell the coffee. Quit chasing that high score because it is likely that the score is flawed or that you won't agree with it anyway. Be your own man (or woman). Your enjoyment of the wine will probably go up and no doubt your pocketbook will thank you.

Why Riesling is the greatest white wine grape

2007-03-04T22:03:00.000-06:00

After a long hiatus due to the blessed birth of our first child (a son), I'm back to rant and rave.

So, with all due respect to the Burgundians, certain California products (Ramey, Marcassin) and the top Aussies, it must be certainly true that riesling is the greatest white wine grape. Why, you ask? I can think of maybe 8-10 reasons in support of this declaration which I will detail below. Now I am hardly revolutionary in this assertion. I have read several articles written by professionals who share my assessment. But let me detail why I believe this to be so.

Good riesling grows just about anydamnwhere. There is a reason why they are not growing chardonnay in the upper regions of the Nahe or Mosel in Germany. That vine will not grow there, at least not survive and produce world-class wines of any distinction. Yet in this area where hard winters would devastate a chardonnay vineyard, riesling grows, nay, thrives. Riesling also appears to ripen fully in these short growing season, cold areas. Now I am not an enologist and I cannot tell you to what extent vines are harmed by hard winters but it must be that the vine works well in these conditions or it would never have been grown for hundreds of years in these cold areas.
Riesling makes great wines in all types of styles. There is no grape, white or red, in which the skilled vintner can make world class in steely bone dry, round dry, off-dry, moderately sweet, sweet and sticky botritised styles. I suppose the grape that comes closest in terms of this schizophrenic behavior is chenin blanc, which also swings across many styles. But chenin blanc still has limitations, which riesling does not seem to have.
Riesling makes world-class wines around the world. Okay, here is a partial list of great riesling producing wines around the world...Germany, Austria, Australia, California, Washington state, New York state France and I even believe South Africa is getting into the act. I would be surprised if New Zealand, Argentina, Chile and other areas do not get into the act if they have not already. Now it is certainly true that many of these areas have had success with chardonnay. But cold areas like Germany and Austria cannot grow good chardonnay...period. It just will not ripen in those climes nor will the vines survive the harsh winters.
Great Riesling is cheap when compared to top chardonnay. Come one, this is not even a contest. Absolutely awesome German spatleesen and ausleesen wines made in fabulous years often go for under $30. Try finding any well-heeled or highly rated white Burgundy or Napa Chardonnay for under $100. White burgundy is most acute in this, ripping off the consumer on a daily basis. But it is truly true that riesling is nearly free when compared with similar quality chardonnay. Further, at low price points, chardonnay can be flabby, flat and uninteresting. On the other hand, great riesling can be had for under $10.
Riesling don't need no damn oak to make it taste good. Vintners would argue that the reason their chardonnay is so expensive is due to their ubiquitous use of "new French oak" to improve the wine. I say if it needs new French oak to taste good, why don't you just give me an oak chip to suck on. Great wines, while improved with aging and vinification techniques, should also be able to stand alone as a great wine. Riesling, which is generally aged in stainless or large neutral wood tanks, does this while chardonnay often needs additional "help" to reach the top. Sure, the oak is nice, but all serious wine drinkers have encountered the well-rated chardonnay where the after harvest treatment gives more of the flavor profile then the grape itself. For purity of the grape in the glass, riesling has it all over chardonnay.
Dessert rieslings are amongst the longest lived wines...period. Along with great Sauternes, Port and arguably certain red Bordeaux, top rieslings age for 100 or more years and actually improve during this period. While the best chardonnay can stand some bottle age, most will not take longer than 10 years in the bottle before they lose their zip.
Great dry and off dry rieslings compliment food better than top notch chardonnays (with the exception of Chablis, perhaps). Riesling loves food, especially cuisine that is thought to ruin most wines (especially chardonnay) such as Thai, Chinese and even Mexican. A well-educated, smart consumer can select a style of riesling to compliment just about any dish with possible exception of a big old steak. And only an old lady or a jerkoff drinks chardonnay with a big old steak. It is a rule, you must drink a big red with your bloody steak unless you have an allergy to red wine. For that, save the riesling for dessert.
Great riesling reflects terrior at least as well if not better than chardonnay. Let's face it, chardonnay is amongst the most manipulated grapes there is. Using techiques such as heavy oak application, malolactic fermentation, cold stabilization, acidification and de-alcing, vitners around the world manipulate chardonnay seeking a uniform, international style preferred by wine writers and perhaps some consumers, especially those who buy labels. I am aware of no such machinations taken seeking the "internationalization" of riesling. It is true that riesling is often chapitilized (sugar added) legally in areas such as Alsace and Germany because short and cold growing seasons often prevent full maturation of the grape. But that hardly affects the flavors positively, more likely, it represents a wine that the vintner has declassified and is just trying to make into a simple table wine, hence not really part of this discussion. And while certainly any well made wine will require vinification techniques to improve flavors or stabilize the wine, compared to chardonnay, riesling almost makes itself. I would argue that riesling is a truer expression of terrior than most chardonnays.
Riesling is more interesting than chardonnay. While truly great chardonnay unfolds in many layers, it's flavor profile is still rather narrowly defined, no matter where in the world you grow it. I will allow that some areas have added new flavor components to the stock buttery, slate, caramel, oaky, smokey flavor profile that typically describes chardonnay. Australia, which gets a citrus flavor in its chardonnay, comes to mind as an example of this. But riesling really has a much greater defined flavor profile than this. Perfume, slate, floral, citrus, botritis, unctous - these are just a few of terms describing riesling. This is especially true when you consider the different flavors that emerge across the sweetness spectrum of riesling.

So for my money, I believe that the noble Riesling is truly the greatest white wine grape. Let me know if you agree.

Cork Taint should be Illegal

2006-11-20T22:05:00.000-06:00

It really pissed me off the other night when I opened a bottle of 1998 Chapoutier La Bernardine Chateauneuf du Pape and the darn thing was corked. The store I bought it from 5 or more years ago, Merchant de Vino in Ann Arbor, MI is no longer MDV, I think it was purchased by Whole Foods so I could not return the damn wine even if I wanted to.

Now here is the thing. What other business could sell you a product that is defective when you use it during it's warranty period and not have to stand behind the defective product? This wine is fine, right in it's drinking window, and yet now I have trash because the manufacturer (Chapoutier) could not put a proper wine in the bottle without tainting it with cork. The general feel is that most cork taint is due to natural materials in the cork reacting with chlorine used sanitize the corks to create 2,4,6-trichloroanisole or TCA. So the process used to make sure the corks are free from spoilage microbes also has the potential to spoil the wine. Most people cannot recognize cork taint as such. It just tastes like musty wine, or wine that has too much "wood" in it. It still is bad, the wineries, critics, academicians and your own taste buds tell you so.

Boo Hoo for the winery. They are selling me a product with the guarantee that they have done everything right and made a quality product. Why should it be my responsibility to eat this wine? I didn't make it, they did. I just wasted my hard earned money on it. Can you imagine a television that broke when you changed the channel but the manufacturer would not replace the set? The problem with wine is that we do save it and not use it right away like a TV that you use every day. I have saved this wine for years. I could not even locate the receipt if I had to. Still yet, the winemaker is responsible for their product and when they spoil it they should be required to replace the bottle.

Here's for asking our state, local or national governments to right a law requiring cork tainted wine to be replaced by the distributor or winery. Of course it will never happen. The solution is to buy wine from a retailer who will replace it if it is defective, even if you have had it stored for 10 years in your wine cellar. I know that Wine Discount Center in Chicago promises to be one such retailer.

This does not even began to address the disappointment one feels when their lovingly cared for wine is opened and ends up being corked. The greater issue is for the wine industry. How do you stop the cork taint and still allow the wine to age as is required to truly reach its potential? I am one that hates the thought of losing the cork as a closure but I also am sick and tired of having wine ruined by cork taint. Losing the mystique of the cork will be difficult, especially for restaurant ordered wine. But it does seem like it is necessary to change to avoid the TCA. It has to stop.

Brett sucks and I don't mean Favre

2006-09-08T23:33:00.000-05:00

I have been finding more and more wines that contain offensive levels of off flavors produced by the wine spoilage yeast brettanomyces. I recently tried to start a discussion over at Vinography on the subject. Alder had written about a bottle of Chateau Beaucastel that he recently drank and I knew that the southern Rhone wines, Beaucastel in particular, can be some of the biggest offenders in the brett sweepstakes, often trying to claim it is terroir. To use my favorite Blogger word...bullshit.

I found the following article at Wineanorak very interesting. It is well written in that it addresses the science (which appeals to my engineering brain) while being readable for those not so scientifically inclined.

In some ways it supports my feelings about brett but in other ways supports the assertion that some brett (or rather the right molecule) is an advantage. In truth, I think it will always be subjective but there is no doubt that picking riper grapes opens up the door to residual sugar which can allow brett to flourish. It also seems to indicate that heat would exacerbate brett, even using Beaucastel in the article.

http://www.wineanorak.com/brettanomyces.htm

2005 Bordeaux futures tanking

2006-09-06T01:58:00.000-05:00

Sam's Wine and Spirits in Chicago just ran a special offering 15% discounts on about 3 dozen Bordeaux futures from 2005. As I have commented on in the past, the release price of these futures was not only ridiculous but nearly illegal, in my estimation. I think Sam's already discounting their futures is an indication of two things:

1. These futures were overpriced initially.
2. The market for these wines will tank on release.

It serves the greedy buggers right. I hope they all get stuck with tons of overpriced wine. We will see.

Are the A's for real????

2006-08-30T23:31:00.000-05:00

It has been a very interesting year in baseball. I could very well have called my blog baseballs, guitars and grapes and it would have been quite accurate. Although I grew up in Pittsburgh and Chicago and favored the Pirates (Clemente, Hebner, Parker and all) and later the White Stockings (Melton, Dickie Allen, etc.) I have absolutely no allegiance to those teams. In fact, I enjoy rooting against the Black Chickens and only rooted for them a little bit when the made the Series just to shut up the Chicago fans predicting doom and so I would not have to hear about the Black Sox curse any more. Now if we could only kill the Goat (er, Ghost) of Wrigley. And the Pirates have sucked for so long who could root for them from afar.

When we moved to California in 1977 I did not really have a baseball team any more. I kind of rooted for the Pirates when the won the series, '79 and '82, if memory serves. But after that no real allegiance until I started going with my college roommate to A's games in the mid-80's. This was not too long after their phenomenal run of the early '70's and Rickey Henderson was swiping bases every which way but loose which was kind of fun. When Cansucko and JuiceGwire came up about this time, I kind of got hooked on the Bash Brother thing, although I hated Canseco and still do. Once, when he was playing for Texas, I almost got into a fight with a September call-up when I was yelling at him (he was playing right field) during a game. Canseco had been down to Triple A to rehab that year and the punk ass Triple A call-up who had played with Sucko didn't like that I was screaming shit at him from the stands. He told me to shut up and I told him where to go. Fortunately, my wife stepped in and shut me up. The beer talking, I think.

My wife and I literally were in the first row of seats right at the end of the visitor's bullpen and I used to try to talk to the players all the time. In later years we moved about three rows up above the A's bullpen on the other side of the field and got to see Eckersley warming up all the time. He was an odd character. He would come out to the bullpen late in the game, never acknowledging the fans, never looking up. I can assume that he was focused on the job ahead, but I also heard that he was kind of a dickhead. Some of the younger players used to complain that he made the A's clubhouse pretty tough in those days.

Now I will never forgive Eckersley for giving up the Gibson homer in '88. No way should they have lost that series although I think Tony Larussa has shown multiple times that he is the worst big series manager in history. Tony's one game at a time strategy, win every series works in the regular season. But you need Tommy Lasorda type emotion to win in the playoffs. Luck helps too. When dumbass Canseco and his wife got into it with Larussa in '90 and basically cost the team that series (again, Cincy played with emotion, the A's not) and the team was sold to Mr. and Mr. Fugal (Hoffman and what's his name, his partner) when the owner died (Walter Haas, former CEO of Levis, if memory serves)and I moved to Illinois, I kind of lost my fervor for the A's. And they sucked so bad in the mid '90's who could really like them?

Any how, as they got better in the late '90's and early '00's and I got DirecTv I became a fan again. I continued to be a fan even though they continued to break my heart ... always the bridesmaid but never good enough to win. I mean for God's sake, slide Jeremy dumbass Giambi. And Chavez, how about making at least one defensive play in Boston. And swept at home by the Yankees after winning both games in their ballpark. Give me a break.

And I am not sure about Billy Beane. Is he really that good a GM? I think his ego is too big and he needs to shut up and at least accept some of the tried and true ways that baseball has been won through the last 100 years. Things like stealing a base occasionally, scoring a run without a homer, manufacturing runs. Beane is not that smart, baseball wise or otherwise, to throw 100 years of baseball facts and figures out and expect to win using his own theories.

Which makes this year's A's team so interesting. Second to last in hitting in the majors, hit into more double plays by far than any other team in the major, pathetic on-base percentage and up by 7.5 games with 29 left to play as I write this. I am beginning to believe that this year may be the year for the A's. What makes this year different is that they are not only taking their walks but they are manufacturing a few runs and stealing some bases. They have their flaws but so do all team, even Steinsuckers Yankees (all $250 million worth of payroll). The A's are also playing with more swagger than I have ever seen them. And dummies like Bradley and Kendall are bringing some previously unseen emotion to the team. Bradley yelling at fans and flinging his bat all over the diamond, Kendall fighting that jackass John (I am your) Lackey from the Anaheim, California, Los Angeles we don't know where we play Angels. Yeah.

And this has been one of the most weird years I have ever seen for injuries in baseball. The A's have used the DL 15 times this year, Boston 16. We all know that the Yankees have something like $100 Million worth of payroll on the DL in guys like Sheffield, Matsui and Pavano. How about Boston without Manny or Big Crapi. But the A's, at various times this year, have been without several starting pitchers (including Harden who is truly their best when healthy), multiple relievers, their starting shortstop, center fielder, third baseman, Hall of Fame DH'er, closer, etc., etc., and they keep finding a way to win. Most importantly, someone different steps up every game. This is important. Teams that win the World Series have multiple ways to beat you because you can truly shut down certain players in the playoffs. For example, Bonds almost never hit the year that the Giants lost to the Angels in the Series. And all players go through slumps. But when guys like Bucky Dent hit homers to win games, you know you are getting contributions throughout the lineup and that is how you win in the post season.

In addition, the A's are number two in pitching and number three in defense in the majors. So these things, combined with their attitude this year, makes me think good things are to come. I mean, look, the Mets are playing in a league where like one entire team is above .500, them. They are okay but not a great team, just playing in a shitty league. It worries me a little that they A's have feasted on the Mariners this year. Without the 19 straight wins against them, they are not in first place. But they have held their own against the very best this year...7-3 versus Boston, 6-4 (I think) verses NY, 4-5 vs. Detroit (with more games in their park). The White Sox are just okay, Ozzie Butthead burned out their starters last year and I am convinced that Detroit was playing way over their head through the first two-thirds of the year. The gnashing of teeth following their recent 3-7 slide make me wonder if they will not fall out of the playoffs. I think they have been doing it with smoke, mirrors and rookie pitchers this year. With rookie pitchers, they often win early until the league gets to see them a couple of times. Then they will often have a series of quite poor starts until they adjust to what the hitters have adjusted to.

As for the A's, I am starting to become a believer.

Now if we could just get some fans to go to the game to support the team. I would go if I lived anywhere near Oakland. So you Bay Area fair weather fans, get going, the weather could not be more fair and if you don't start supporting that team they are going to end up in Las Vegas, Sacramento or San Jose.

Visiting the Napa Valley - Day Trips

2006-08-17T23:09:00.000-05:00

Okay, so now that you have taken a mudbath (are you still finding peat in your personal hair?), visited the wineries in the Napa Valley, eaten at The French Laundry and visited Dean and deLuca just for fun, its time for a few day trips to round out your experience. One trip I highly recommend is the trip north on Hwy. 29 to Hwy. 128 up to the Alexander Valley across winding roads and into Northern Sonoma and the town of Healdsburg. I am not so enamored of the Alexander Valley wineries but AVV is probably worth a stop. Hanna, Sausal and Stonestreet are others in the area worth visiting. Continue on to Healdsburg where you have made an appointment to visit Jordan. I don't like their wine but some people pay big bucks for it so it is probably worth a visit. Continue on to Simi, one of the best wineries in the area, a great tasting room and tour and underappreciated wines. Travel into downtown Healdsburg and visit Rosenblum and Seghesio.

A detour worth taking from here is north of town to Lytton Springs Road where you will find the great wines of Ridge along with the decent wines and top notch tasting room at Mazzocco.

From Lytton Springs, heading back across 101 into Dry Creek Valley which in itself can be a full day of tasting. At this point, your day trip is probably turning into a two day trip. Find a great restaurant in Healdsburg or head back along 29 and 128 to one of the fine Napa restaurants to end your day.

Where to Napa Valley - The Wines

2006-08-16T23:19:00.000-05:00

Okay, now it is onto the good stuff...The wine. Before I move on to day trips that you can do over to Sonoma County, let me cover some of our favorite wine stops in the valley.

I guess I would have to rate Cuvaison as my number one wine tasting destination in the valley. Located right outside of Calistoga, it is a great place to go after the aforementioned mudbath...don't forget the pre-bath brazilian. It is an intimate tasting room with nice people. A good place to eat your sandwiches can be found on the grounds. I have been a long time Club Cuvaison member so my tasting is free unless I want a new tasting glass to take home (which I do not). They have good wine at decent prices and the tasting room is low key, unlike many of the valley rooms. It'll still cost you to taste (which sucks, in my opinion, but paying for tasting is now pretty much universal in all California wine areas) if you are not a Club member. And do not forget that a pre-tasting mudbath will make the wine hit you that much quicker.

An interesting tasting room can be found around the corner at Clos Pegase. This wine room has millions of dollars worth of art from the collection of the rich dude that owns the winery. I do not have an opinion of the wine because I have not drunk enough CP to know.

Also on the north end of the valley is Chateau Montelena. This winner of the famous Paris tasting of 1976 (for the Chardonnay) is considered to have one of the best, longest aged cabernets in CA. The winery has been downgraded recently due to an outbreak of brettanomyces in the winery and I found them to be very full of themselves. But it is worth the trip to see the beautiful grounds.

Consider taking the drive north to Guenoc. This interesting trip on sometimes treacherous roads over the old volcanic territory is rewarded by a tasting at one of the more unique and underappreciated wineries in the area. The winery is located in the middle of nowhere but offers a fine selection of wines across various price points. Try the Langtry Meritage (pronounced like Heritage) or Bella Oaks Reserve wines if they are serving them

Many people think Sterling, the famous winery on the hill that you have to take a ski tram or bus to get to, is worth the visit but I say no way. I have hated every bottle of Sterling wine that I have ever tasted so you can take the tram if you want, but only do it on a nice day to experience the view. Vinophiles will hate the wine.

I used to like Beringer a lot but now that they are part of Beringer Blass Fosters Lager whatever the hell they are, I am hesitant to recommend them. But they used to have a fine tour and I still think Ed Sbragia, their winemaker, is brilliant. I just think the corporate beancounters have castrated old Eddie and it really pisses me off how they have continued to raise the price of their Beringer PR Cabernet to the point where I will not buy it again. At $50 it was pretty good deal but at $100 they can suck my you know what.

South on Hwy. 29 south of St. Helena is Flora Springs tasting room. The Komes family are owners of the aforementioned Rancho Caymus Lodge, and the nice tasting room is worth a look for the breadth of their offerings and the nice people (including a Komes family member) running the joint. Plus they are right next door to one of my favorite gourmet stores of all time, Dean and deLuca. You should plan a trip so that you pick up lunch at D&D. Their selection of meats, cheese, condiments, tools and other stuff dwarfs Zingermann's (Ann Arbor, MI) plus they have a world class collection of wines you can poach from to take to your dinner at one of the restaurants in the area with reasonable corkage charges (most are less than $20). Just make sure to inquire about corkage before hand.

When Niebaum Coppola was Inglenook Napa Valley, it was my favorite winery in the valley. When Francis bought it, the wine got shitty and overpriced and he turned the beautiful, old visitor area into a shrine to his often just as shitty movies. So I my few visits since he took over the winery have been met with major disappointment. Film buffs would probably pee their pants with his collection of film stuff but from the second you walk in the door there they will try to sell you lots of crap with his wine or a films' name on it. The winery just seems to exist to sell you shit with Copolla name on it so he can get more rich. F... that.
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Other wineries worth visiting include Caymus (but don't expect to taste much, 'lil Chucky Wagner seems to only have one or two wines available for tasting and I always wonder why he bothers to have a "tasting room" anyway). Other notables include Domaine Chandon, Spring Mountain, Newton, Phil Togni, St. Clement, Freemark Abbey, Whitehall Lane, Folie a Deux and look for some of the smaller, new or old producers you may not have heard of. Also, there are some excellent wineries on the east side of the valley off of Silverado Trail. Stags Leap, Pine Ridge, Cakebread, Clos du Val, Villa Mount Eden/Conn Creek and Rombauer are worth a visit if you have the time or find yourself there late in the day and needing a glass of wine. Check to make sure they are open and are not "by appointment only". I forget which ones require a call ahead.

I have also read that the Pope Valley is an up and coming area but I do not know what if any wineries have tasting rooms up there. Finally, Mount Veeder is home to several wineries including Hess.

Just remember, when all is said and done, you are just starting your California wine country visit. Day trips to Sonoma city, central and north Sonoma County and the Alexander Valley are yet to come. You cannot visit without a day trip to Ridge, Chateau St. Jean or Alexander Valley Vineyards or a day trip over to the quaint towns of Sonoma (south end of the Sonoma wine trail) and Healdsburg or a full day in the Dry Creek Valley or the Russian River wineries. So go, plan a week of visits and don't forget to designate a driver.

A votre sante - Joel

Wine Spectator Rants Redux

2006-08-16T22:59:00.000-05:00

Well you have to love the Wine Spectator...as if. I have ranted in the past about what a misnomer their name has become. Today they are no longer the "Wine Spectator". Instead, they are the "Lifestyle Spectator". And wouldn't you know it, this issue has done it again. Their "second annual" food issue was out this week and they have managed to spend over 70% of the article material on this issue on anything but wine. Cheese, spices, meats whatever they could come up with but nary a drop of wine to talk about. Come on. If you are going to call yourself the Wine Speculator, speculate about wine, not about every other darn thing on earth.

Then both Jimmy Laube and Matty Kramer discuss the ridiculous state of Bordeaux futures. Much to my surprise, Laubeeee gets closer to my previously stated views on this than Kramer, with whom I am usually in much more agreement. Laube sort of dances around the issue of the greed of the Bordelaise and kind of makes the point that those buggers are trying to upcharge to get the auction price on the wine before it goes to auction. He does seem to indicate he agrees with me, there is a real risk of those people who are buying on futures may not be able to sell at auction at a higher price because the wineries raised price to capture that markup before auction.

Kramer, on the other hand, seems to indicate he believes the wines are a deal and will appreciate by the time they are released. Further, he does not take the greedy pigs to task for overcharging, like Laubeee sort of does.

But both of these knuckleheads miss the point to a certain extent. Have you ever heard of Internet Capital Group? How about any of the other of those internet companies that crapped all over greedy investors at the end of the last century. I think '05 Bordeaux is an internet stock purchased in 1996. I heard from an employee of Wine Discount Center that a few of their customers asked for as much '05 Bordeaux as they could get, ostensibly so that they can turn around and resell it after release. Problem is, there is no guarantee they will ever be able to sell it for a profit, at least in the short to medium term. And what kind of asshole buys a consumable product meant to be enjoyed as an investment, especially untested (or untasted) years before it is available. Two kinds, rich guys who probably will never drink it but will never bother to sell it either, and greedy, stupid bastards with more greed than money who I hope lose their shirt.

If you buy futures, buy them to secure supply and save money (prepaying should save you money) and drink the wine when it shows up, like I do with Ridge Monte Bello.

And for the Speculator, they have done it again. Decided to be a lifestyle magazine and refusing to call the bluff of their advertisers (the Bordelaise).

Where to go Napa Valley

2006-08-14T22:28:00.000-05:00

So as a former (and hope to be future) Bay Area resident, I thought it would be worthwhile to write about my wife and my favorite places to go in wine country. First let me say that while I like Sonoma and have stayed over there in the past, for non-residents, you have to home base it in the Napa Valley. You can base there and do day trips over to Sonoma, but really, if you are not a frequent visitor to No. Ca. wine country, the world has to start in Napa.

So a trip to Napa for me begins with my hotel destination. We like Vintage Inn and its sister hotel Villagio in Yountville. Pricey like everything in Napa, but look for a deal and they give you a nice breakfast spread every morning that makes lunch optional. Other nice places to stay include Rancho Caymus in Rutherford and Mount View Hotel in Calistoga. Rancho is nice but we ate a La Toque, their "award winning restaurant" which is actually not run by the Rancho people, I think, and the people at La Toque were jerkoffs. My money is as good as anyone else's so I say take their snooty noses and stuff them up their own rear ends and sniff real hard. So the hotel...good, the restaurant...sucks. Mount View is old but has been recently renovated so is worth a try. For my money, Yountville and Calistoga are the two most interesting towns in the valley.

Okay, so one of the local secrets, sorry Rutherford, is the Rutherford Grill located right next to BV Winery and in front of Rancho Caymus. NO CORKAGE FEE, A GOOD WINE LIST AND GOOD HEARTY STEAKS, SEAFOOD AND OTHER HEARTY FARE. You can buy a bottle of aged reserve at one of the wineries on your trip and pop it there for free. What a deal. But I do not think they take reservations, like many places in the valley, so go early or be prepared to wait.

So let's back up and go back to Yountville. The general progression of your days will follow the geography of the valley. Yountville is the first city basically in wine county, in my mind. With the imposing mission style California Veteran's Home and Hospital on the west side of Hwy. 29 and the town on the right, it probably just edges Calistoga for interesting places to visit and good eats. And of course it is home to the most famous restaurant in the United States, The French Laundry. I have eaten at the Laundry twice and found it overpriced and pretentious. But the food is good with many small courses and the wine list speaks for itself. My brother-in-law and sister-in-law love the place and they probably are only slightly below me when it comes to eating and drinking so I trust their opinion. So it is one of those gotta-do-it-once places but, like Charley Trotters here in Chicago, if you ain't a billionaire, consider it a once in a lifetime experience.

Our favorite thing to do in Yountville is visit the art galleries. Nancie at Images is about as good a host as you can ever find. We have purchased a good deal of artwork from her through the years and while I know her job is to make you feel comfortable and sell you shit, she does seem sincere and I like her. Most importantly, she will not pressure you and you can browse away without being hassled, which I always like. Check out the glass shop next to Images North for some pricey but really interesting glass Objet d'Arte.

You could eat all week at the restaurants in and around Yountville and not be disappointed, so give them all a try if you like. One experience is Bistro Jeanty, which is a real French bistro located in the heart of Napa Valley. Like organ meats, they got 'em. How about a full plate of raw beef like I had in Paris so many years ago. I saw a kid trying to impress his girl by eating a whole plate of the stuff and I bet he was barfing all night. Worth eating there just for the show. If you cannot get into the Laundry, try his more casual bistro Bouchon, which I actually prefer because they are not trying to charge you $50 for corkage if you bring your own wine and they are not nearly as snooty as the Laundry. I mean when the Laundry is charging $50 for corkage, they are telling you that they expect to make a minimum of that for each bottle of wine you buy from their wine list. That, my friends, is obnoxious and obscene. I have a real hard time paying a $50 upcharge on any wine at a restaurant, I could care less what the restaurant is. So shame on them.

Brix, Domaine Chandon and Hurleys are among the other choices in the area, with Mustards not too far down the road either. Of course there is also the seminal Napa Valley Grille, a place that I remember 20 plus years ago when California Cuisine was little more than a twinkle in Alice Waters eye. I am not sure if this is the same place as I visited so many years ago, but I have heard good things and it is worth a shot.

Okay, so enough eating in Yountville. How about St. Helena, the next major stop north of Rutherford on Hwy. 29? Of course the overhyped and mediocre Travigne is one major stop in town. But I prefer Terra and Martini House. When you start doing American Express commercials like Travigne, you know the quality suffers and the idiots come out just say they went there. Asian inspired Terra (which I heard lost a lot of their wine in a fire or some other disaster) has been a winner for us and they are a favorite of the vegetarian crowd. I visited Martini House several years ago just after it opened. The service was a little spotty and the food was just okay, but we had nice bottle of Italian Merlot, Falesco Montiano and the surroundings were really neat so it is worthy of another try.

Now onto Calistoga. One of the best and most disgusting experiences of my life was taking my first mud bath at Dr. Wilkinson's in Calistoga. My old psycho, pyro friend, Jim Antaki, introduced my wife and I to mud bathing 20 years ago or so. Jim and his wife Jan's anniversary is the same day as ours (or maybe a day or two before or after) and for a couple of years we would go to the valley with them to celebrate. Jim always got a mud bath and massage and he talked us into it. We usually go to Dr. Wilkinson's because they have separate men's and women's sections (rather than couples sections) and you are going there to get loose, not have sex. Plus, they seem to have about the best hygiene of any of the spas in Calistoga. For those of you who do not know, Calistoga is located over an underground natural thermal springs. As I will discuss below, the area was once (and probably still is) volcanically active. The spring is the source of the famous Calistoga Mineral Water and the spas in the area tap into the source for water and heat for their mud baths and saunas.

Mud is a misnomer, it is really peat moss mixed with volcanic ash from the surrounding hills. The peat and ash mix get a little ripe because they only change it once a week or so and since you sit in it and it pulls the sweat out of your body (along with the wine you had last night and other toxins in your system), you are basically sharing sweat with everyone else who used it before you. Now they steam the stuff before you get in, but it still gets a little ripe. There are two really gross things about it you have to get over in order to enjoy the experience. First, when you get in you have to literally force yourself down into the goop. This is pretty gross and if they screw up and do not get the temperature of the mud down before you get in, you can get a real shock to your system. The grossest thing is how the mud clings to every hair on your body. When you exit the tub, you are coated with wet peat moss and ash that you have to spend 20 minutes removing via shower. It is a good reason to get a Brazilian wax (men included) prior to going there. Because believe me, getting this stuff out of your butt crack, pubic hair and scrotum can be hell. I shutter to think what the ladies go through. Believe me when I tell you pieces of peat will show up in unexpected places (behind your ears, various folds of fat) for about 3 days after the bath.

But after a mud bath, whirlpool, sauna blanket wrap and 30 or 60 minute massage, you are absolutely jello. Really, it is a great way to remove some of the stress from your life. I always get impatient, especially during the blanket rap, so you should try to go in with a relaxed mental state to get the full enjoyment.

I have to admit, we have almost never eaten in Calistoga, so I am not sure where to go should you be up there. I believe the Mount View has a good restaurant and there are a few others in town that look good from the outside. Yountville, St. Helena, Rutherford and Napa are better known than Calistoga for their restaurants so I say eat lunch instead of dinner there. There is a "market" across the street from Dr. Wilkinsons, I forget the name, which has awesome selections of cheese, cold cuts, sandwiches, salads and the like. My recommendation, get a fairly early mud bath, get some lunch in Calistoga and spend the rest of the day visiting the shops in town. Or go wine tasting, which I have not even gotten to yet.

So this is the first installment of Joel's Napa Valley Visit. Stay tuned for future installments when I get to the good stuff, the fermented grape juice thing.

Wine Pricing, the Sky is Falling

2006-08-09T00:32:00.000-05:00

I have watched with curiosity as 2005 Bordeaux futures have stretched to the most ridiculous heights ever seen due to speculation by jerkoffs who will try to sell these at auction in a few years to make money. How anyone can speculate on a consumable, fragile item like wine is beyond me. But there is absolutely no way that first growth Bordeaux's should be going for $700, $800 even $1000 a bottle two years or more before they will even be released to the market. What a freakin' joke.

On the other end of the spectrum, I have purchased fabulous wines like 1998 Terrabianca, 2002 Rieslings and Gruner Veltliner from Birgit Eichinger, 2004 Shiraz and Cabernet from Marquis Phillips and other wines on closeouts at literally half or less of their original price. At the prices I paid, the QPR (quality to price ratio) was huge. I doubt if the same will ever be said by those fools paying for the '05 Bordeaux en primeur.

So what is going on? On one end of the spectrum you have the Bordelaise screwing people and on the other end you have many wineries and distributors dropping their pants just to get people to buy their wine, and these are pretty tasty wines. From what I see, there appears to be two main contributors to this closeout phenomenon. First, there seems to remain a glut of juice flowing about in this global wine market. No wine producing area in the world seems to be immune to this price war. I have heard stories of wineries around France shuttering or being purchased at pennies on the dollar because they just cannot sell their juice...not enough demand.

Now the second thing going on, and I have been bitching about this for years, is that wine is just too damn expensive, 24-7-365 across the board. Those guys selling their wine at half or less of the original price would not be doing so if they priced it right to begin with, now would they? They always say the key to selling a house is setting the price right. Why would wine be any different?

And the fools buying '05 Bordeaux futures, well, I predict that they will be sitting on some good juice that does not appreciate in the next 10 years. It will not be the investment those greedy bastards hope it will be because wine demand will slow with the slowing economy and continued plantings of grapes throughout the world. More competition and a softening economy, embroiled in war and gas at $4 per gallon (in the US) will spell disaster for this industry. And the high priced gougers like Margaux, Mouton, Cheval Blanc and the lot will potentially suffer the most...or not. Maybe rich idiots will still covet this stuff for the name, even though they have no idea what they are buying. I, for one, hope the people hogging up these futures and driving up the price, end up with the same situation we saw during the internet stock crash in the late '90's. Sure they will have great wine to drink, but I hope they are forced to drink it because they cannot sell it for what they paid for it. Boo hoo, I have to drink my wine instead of trading it like a commodity.

So I say to the big corporations running the wine game and also the individual producers, price your wine fairly and we will buy and drink it. Wine is a consumable beverage meant to be enjoyed and you are ruining the fun for 95% of us drinking the stuff. I am a capitalist, so make a good profit. But quit screwing us consumers, who do you think you are, ExxonMobile?

Wherefore art thou, Floyd Landis

2006-08-09T00:18:00.000-05:00

Well, it's time to say, Floyd needs to put up or shut up. No more fake excuses, no more supposed guessing about whiskey and beer. Look Floyd, if you did it, face it like a man. If you did not, then fight it for real, like your former boss Lance would have.

I have no problem believing that Landis was sabotaged somehow. Let's face it, the drug testing program in sports is joke and the lab that originally found Landis' abnormal result is, at best, terrible with protocols, at worst a sham lab that would try to hurt an American (they tried with Lance) by any means possible. It is not really believable that Landis would take steroids for one stage of a race, they do not work that way. But it is completely believable that he is just an idiot athlete who got bad counsel that he could take the steroid, get a short term benefit and not get caught. I am pretty sure he is not a brain wizard or he would not be riding 20,000 kilometers to prepare for a 20 day race. That, most intelligent people would agree, is just stupid. Sorry Lance.

I suspect Floyd got something that caused this test, perhaps through another unknown source. Could have been a massage cream, drink, shot for his hip, whatever. Could have even be something that the Tour had approved. I heard a commentator claim that they take testosterone patches used to dispense testosterone around the clock to patients, and put them on for a couple of hours to supposedly get a benefit. Could he have done this?

Anyhow, if he is guilty, Floyd must admit it and take his medicine like a man. If he continues to maintain his innocence, I will believe him, but based on the commentaries I have read in various papers from around the world, no one else will. At the end of the day, the cycling bodies in the US and the world athletic congress will make the ultimate decision.

I do not believe that Floyd is a cheat

2006-07-28T22:20:00.000-05:00

See my previous post for background to this post.

The French, the same lab that conducted the witch hunt on Lance last year, is the lab that is claiming Floyd Landis had increased levels of testosterone and that he was obviously doping. Now first you have to ask yourself, why would the Tour de France use the same lab that illegally released bogus test results of 8 year old samples of Lance's whiz in order to smear his name last year to analyze samples for this year's TDF. What happened to chain of custody, secrecy and scientific integrity? I would not use that lab to examine my turds for seeds after finishing sesame chicken. What a bunch of crap. The TDF, in it's arrogance and sick psychological need to hate and smear America, is now going after Floyd and the lab is in cahoots. I mean sure, the TDF has had it's share of scandals and many bikers are cheats, but to presume guilt like they do is not only wrong in so many ways, but in my mind it is just damn un-American, and what else would we expect from certain French people.

I have been reading all the articles from the various papers around the world, including the London Times and L'Equipe (the scummiest paper in sports, just as bad as anything from Fox News) and they have already judged, convicted and sentenced Landis to biking death. What is wrong with people who, in the absence of evidence, are so willing to vehemently convict a man and ruin his reputation and career. Floyd is now screwed, even if he can prove his is clean because he will always be assumed to have beaten the system.

I was glad to see him come out swinging today to not only proclaim his innocence but vow to fight to prove it. This is counsel he got from Lance and good for him. Look, I do not believe he is guilty. If he had been using steroids, it would have been detected in one of the earlier 6 tests he took during the tour or one of the other of dozens of test he took this year while winning stages and bike races across the US and Europe. Steroids are used to help people build body mass and recover after hard workouts. They do not work, at least not appreciably, as a short term repair for the body. Check it out and see what the doctors have to say about it. So testosterone (steroids, like in baseball) would only have been used if it was a full blown program to cheat and he certainly would have done it in the off-season and been caught before his hard ride in the TDF.

It just makes no sense that he would use steroids or testosterone. Blood doping, okay, EPO, maybe, but testosterone during the middle of a race makes no sense. It may be that his ratio of testosterone to epitestosterone was off because of his natural body chemistry and the great strain those three days had put on his body. This is my guess. As far as his amazing recovery, such things are not at all unheard of in bicycling because the incredible conditioning of the athletes and the physical care they get during the tour to help them recover. After bonking in 2000 and 2003, Lance went on to win stages and each tour. Floyd was the best cyclist before his bad day and I think he was just careless on that day. He forgot to eat and drink properly just like Lance did back in '00. On the day in question, the tactics of the field allowed him get 7 minutes back that day. Sure, he rode well that day, but the once the peleton and leaders realized they needed to chase Floyd, his lead stayed pretty much the same. The roads on that stage, because of their narrow, winding nature, ruined the peleton's ability to use aerodynamics to catch Floyd once they put their mind to it. They just did not analyze the stage properly and Floyd, once he got the lead by riding hard when everyone else was on cruise, was able to ride at the same pace as the chasers who were really pretty much all riding as individuals, not as a peleton or team. In fact, I think Sastre even pulled back a couple of seconds on Floyd during the final descent, although Periero, who is not a good descender, actually lost a few more seconds to Floyd on the descent. Do not forget he is literally one of the best descenders, certainly among today's riders, because of his mountain biking background. Plus he obviously took desperate, but reasonable chances during the descent to maintain his advantage. I watched the stage and actually saw him get squirrelly once or twice during the final descent.

So I think this is a witch hunt and the only question is whether or not Floyd gets the court of public opinion behind him because there is no way those scumbags running the TDF and their worthless lab are ever going to admit they fucked up. He is screwed, but I believe him and you should too.

Floyd or Lance

2006-07-26T22:59:00.000-05:00

Let me say, first of all, my favorite sport hero of the first 43 years of my life is Lance Armstrong. I liked him before his cancer but so much more so after, especially when he started shoving his damaged thing up the rear ends of the French. Now I love France and most French people are really good folks, just as good as any American. Unfortunately, the French have their own group of a-holes, similar to W., Rush Limberger and O'Reilly that deserve to be taken behind the woodshed and beaten silly. The French writers, especially the jackasses from L'Equipe, seem to get on someone and be unable to accept truth or let it go. So it was a pleasure to watch Lance kick everyone's butt up L'Alpe d'Huez and then shove his silver bowl up the butts of Jean Marie LeBlanc and the French press.

I also liked Floyd when he was on US Postal and hoped that he would wait for Lance to retire instead of taking the money and running to Phonak. I went into this year's TDF rooting first for Hincapie, who I thought could not win, Popovych, Acevedo and Salvodelli. When Basso and Ullrich were chucked out of the race, I entertained about 30 seconds hope that Hincapie or one of the other Disco boys could win. But I was afraid that George's crash and collarbone break in Paris-Roubaix would really prevent him from being a factor in the TDF. Boy was I right.

Now aside from Disco, the rider I most hoped would win was goofy looking old Floyd Landis. First of all, he was clearly the toughest American in the race, but more importantly, I like him. I thought I was right on after L'Alpe d'Huez but then when he cracked on La Toussuire, I, like the rest of the world, wrote him off. I mean here is a guy riding on one leg in the absolutely toughest sporting event in the world and he just shat all over the mountain. He was out of the race and everyone except one guy knew that to be the case. It was the next day that really made him a true American hero in the mold of Hank Aaron, Lance Armstrong and Greg LeMonde. It's one thing to be Jordan or Bonds and make the most of talent. Overcoming racism, cancer and being shot nearly to death is truly what makes a hero who transcends his sport (or any other activity). While his accomplishment may not be quite up there with Aaron, LeMonde and Lance, it certainly comes close. Single guy against the peleton, riding with one leg, day after nearly falling off his bike and out of the race ready to have a hip replacement at the end of the race and he goes off and wins the race in a really sick manner.

I understand biking pretty well and here is the story for those uneducated in biking. When Floyd cracked and was eight minutes down, he was essentially six feet under with several of scoops of dirt already on top of his coffin. In bike racing, you cannot come back from that kind of deficit in one day when the rest of the 145 or so riders in the race know you are for real. And they still knew Floyd was for real, they just screwed up and failed to keep him out of the first break. Now whether it was the rest of the contenders being tired from spanking Floyd the prior day or just the main contenders' teams being completely asleep at the wheel, Floyd's ride may have been, as Bob Role, OLN commentator and former TDF rider, "the greatest single day bike ride in the modern era of the TDF". What was truly special was his ability to keep his leading time gap even when the other 145 riders were trying their darndest to catch him. On reflection, Role may be right, although Lance's ride up the Col de Tourmalet in 2003 (remember Phil Ligget's comment that he "nearly lost his manhood" or what was left of it on the top tube of his bike) was a close second or maybe as good. As far as I am concerned, the team directors of T-Mobile, CSC and Illes Balears should be fired for not instructing their teams to chase Floyd down. But it is what it is and now he is ensconced in our memories as a real American hero.

Now, just today, comes news that someone high up in Le Tour may have been doping and the speculation as of midnight, CDT, is that is might be Floyd. I sure hope not. I could not see him doing it nor could I imagine him cracking the way he did if he was on the juice. Time will tell and just like I have done for Lance through the years, I will only believe he is dirty if the evidence is incontrovertible. Sometimes I think they mess with the tests or have bad testing protocol when these unexpected positives show up. So we shall see.

At the end of the day, I still go with Lance because he was dead, for all intents and purposes, and he truly rose like the Phoenix and did it for seven straight years. Floyd only has one and can never get more than one or two more before he is too old. Plus a bad hip ain't dead, no matter how you spin it. But if Lance stays retired, and it certainly appears he will remain so, Floyd is a pretty good guy to root for going forward.

Wine Spectator rant numbers 3 and 4

2006-07-23T22:38:00.000-05:00

Rants numbers 3 and 4 have a similar theme. The first is Wine Spectator's use of barrel samples and in-the-field tastings to rate vintages and wines prior to release. The second rant involves their assertion that their ratings are accurate in the maximum drinkability window.

Rating vintages and wines on pre-release or barrels samples is, at best, like test driving a car and then ordering another directly from the factory. You never really know what you are going to get. From my guitar experience it would be like buying a guitar after listening to someone else's "identical" model. Each guitar is a grouping of unique pieces of wood, cut and assembled discretely. Whether mass produced or hand made, any guitar maker or player worth a gross of picks will tell you that two guitars made right next to each other from wood cut from the same tree and right next door when the pieces are sawn will still have different tonal properties. They may be similar but they will never sound the same. Like guitars, wine is a living, breathing, changing item. Pre-release samples or barrels are often cherry picked by vitners to showcase the wine. The Bordelaise or California Big Cab makers may make 20 or more different "assemblages" over the bottling of a vintage of wine. Although the winemaker may strive to make each bottling similar, it cannot physically be done. I think I read where Paul Draper and the crew at Ridge might make a dozen or more assemblages from their various barrels for Monte Bello. Does anyone really think that every barrel intended for bottling of a vintage of a given wine is commutated before bottling. No way. Does not happen. So it is bad enough that the finished bottle I buy may be different than yours but how about rating a wine or vintage of an unfinished assembly or a barrel sample? Even worse. When I read the crap about the 2005 Bordeaux vintage where the Speculator, Sir Bobbie and the rest are slinging 95's and 100's like a drunk rich guy at a titty bar, I say "bullshit". There is no way they can have any more than the most mind-boggling WAG about the true worth of the vintage. Oh, they say, we talked to the winemakers and they all say it is the best swill we have made since blah, blah, blah. You think a winemaker is going to diss his product? Give me a break. Every bottle the make is liquid gold in their overcharging, paid-to-much-for-my-vineyard, God-complex minds.

You ever notice how these wine rating a-holes never compare their barrel/pre-release sample ratings to their bottled sample ratings? You ever try to do it? It is pretty difficult because there are often several years between the publication of the pre-samples and the bottle rankings. They do not want you to do it because they know it would expose the idea of pre-release or barrel ratings as a farce perpetuated to help the winemaking corporations sell swill so that they advertise in their mags. My recommendation is never buy on these pre-tastings. I buy Monte Bello futures every year because I like the wine and I trust Draper won't put out a piece of crap. If you have a favorite wine and want to buy futures, have at it. But know what you are in for and don't ever trust what the wine writing ya-hoos at the Speculator or RP or ST or whomever say.

Now on to the actual bottle rankings. Does anyone really believe the Spectator's assertion that they are rating the wine not how it is now but how it will be when it hits it peak. F--k!!!! Give me a break. God could probably, maybe come up with such a number. But those bozo's. Yea, right. I bought the '92 Caymus Special Selection Cabernet which old Jimmy Laube gave 99 points. I drank it throughout the "drinking window" and it never, ever approached 99 points. Even when the Speculator re-rated it in 2002 in one of their ten year retrospectives, the wine, which should have been right at the peak, only got something like an 89. I would have to go back to my Speculator back issues to look up the actual number, but it was not much higher than that, if at all.

Snap, there it is. By their own admission their rankings "at peak" are bullshit, to quote old Penn and Teller. It boggles the mind that these guys think they are so great at tasting that they can actually predict how a wine will be 5 maybe 10 or more years down the road. What a bunch of arrogant, wine geeky, snobby pigs. It is unfathomable that these jerkoffs can claim to rate the wine "at its peak". You can rate it now, but don't feed the rest of us that you somehow are prescient or God.

NOT

Wine Spectator Rant #2 overrating Wines

2006-07-04T21:41:00.000-05:00

This is a pretty easy rant. There is no doubt in my mind that the Speculator overrates their wines, inconsistenly, on a regular basis. I believe they do this to support their source of revenue, the wine producers, resellers, distributors and others closely tied to the trade. I cannot begin to count the number of wines that I have tasted that get huge ratings and with which I have no agreement whatsoever. Case in point, 1992 Caymus Special Select rated 99 points. No freakin' way. The wine was good, but all three bottles I had were well below this. This week I had a 1999 Domaine du Pesquier Gigondas rated 94 and one of the top 20 wines of the year by the Spectator - HA. This wine was weak and full of bret, no way it was a 94. Maybe 82-84, maybe a little higher or lower. 94 was a joke and a lie.

So what gives, how can they be this bad?

Every taster, of course, has their own biases. This is to be expected and there are some tasters that I have more agreement with than others. Their European tasters are particularly screwed up. I can almost never find a wine rating from their European raters that is within a mile of what I think.

But I think it goes deeper than this. The Speculator has nothing to gain financially by rating wines difficultly. It has only been in the last year or so that they have gotten tougher with the Californians, I think because everything they rated out of Cali had 90 points or above. I have clearly noticed a reduction in scores in Cali wines, especially zinfandel. I think this re-calibration was needed, but I think they have to admit that they may actually have gone too far or that their old system was screwy there. But they will never do that. In the rest of the world, they have yet to keep up. See my last rant for an example, where they refuse to bust the balls of the French and Italians who load their wines up with bret because they are too stupid, lazy and cheap to get it out of there. Come on, step up and call it right you jerkoffs.

If the SPEC rates wines right, they risk losing advertising money and ruin their relationship with the trade. Without a rep, would they even get the wines to rate? What is crapiest about this overatting is how it affects wine prices on the shelf. Case in point the 2003 Domaine du Pegau Chateauneuf-du-Pape Reservee. This wine was selling at $50 pre-release until the Spectator gave it a 97. Next day, it went to $75. Give me a break. Okay, assume this rating is right. But in the overwhelming number of cases where they have overrated, the Spectator's inconsistent overrating of wines much more objectionable. First I pay them to read their rag and then they overrate a wine and it costs me money if I want to buy it. Then, when I try it, it tastes only a fraction of how they rated it. Sickening.

I guess the real solution is not to read the rag and to trust only your own opinion. These jerkoffs do not deserve our reading their rag unless they commit to getting independent, rating consistently and do their jobs. Do you think they ever run any statistics to determine the variability of their staff ratings? I highly doubt it. They would have nothing to gain by putting science and statistics behind their objective crap. In our lab, we know the variability of in our test protocols and we know which operators read high, which read low and which read average. We consciously retrain people who are not up to spec to make sure our lab is accurate and precise. The Speculator...don't count on it. I say again, they do not want to know what their accuracy and precision on their ratings are. Better to ignore it, overrate everything and hope people keep buying your piece of crap.

I say again, I need to grow a set and stop paying for this rag.

Wine Spectator Rant #1

2006-06-25T22:58:00.000-05:00

You know, for years I have purchased the Wine Spectator. I give copies of it to my brother-in-law and a couple of friends for Christmas each year. And I hate it.

I have a hundred rants about why I hate the 'Speculator and I will try to rant on one a week until I get tired of it or run out of complaints, whichever comes first. I would bet it is getting tired.

Rant #1 - Quit covering for wineries that allow Brettanomyces in their wine.

Now I am no winemaker, although I have home-winemade about a dozen wines during my years in California. In my opinion, Brettanomyces, which is a yeast that grows on grapes and in wine, is spoilage, no matter how much you have in the wine. If you ever have a "Bret" wine, you will know it. I have heard it described as wet dog or wet cardboard but I just call in nasty stink. The other night I was drinking a Ridge Mouvedre (they call it Mataro) from 2002 and it reeked of Bret. My wife said I was an idiot for drinking it and I gave in after a half of a glass. I called the winery and they replaced the wine with another vintage, good for them.

For years, the French winemakers, especially in the Rhone and Bordeaux and some Italian winemakers, among others, have allowed this spoilage yeast to proliferate in their wine. They claim it "adds complexity" but I say they are just being cheap and lazy. It tastes like shit and they need to fess up to this. It is no wonder that so many French and Italian wineries are struggling in the global marketplace with many notable ones going under. They are turning out excuses instead of globally recognized and acceptable products.

And now for my rant. The Wine Spectator's European tasters have been covering for this farce for years. To be fair, James Laube, who I detest for his overrating of wines and floating tasting palate, has ranted about American winemakers and chastised them for trying to put one over on us consumers by selling Bret contaminated wine. He recognizes that it all about dollars and cents, consumer beware. But Suckling, Molesworth, Matthews and Marcus, in particular, refuse to point out the same in European wines. Case in point are the 2003 Chateauneuf de Pape wines. CDP vitners are famous for failing to deal with Bret, claiming it adds complexity to the wine. No way, Jose, you are just a lazy Frenchman who has decided to ignore a problem rather than deal with it. Because of ratings in the Spectator, Advocate, etc., I have stocked up on '03 CPD's but have not tried any yet because they are still unsettled and young. But I have read all the reviews. Not a hint of the word Bret in these reviews. However, as I have been doing follow-up research reading wine blogs and the like and it turns out that some of the wines I am paying $70 or more for may be full of the stuff. Pegau CDP Reservee was just rated 97 by the speculator. One tasting I read about in Burlingame, CA said this wine was loaded with Bret, had the most in the tasting. I checked the Spectator review. I had bought my bottles based on it. The closest I could see to Bret was the word "earthy" in the review. Not a damn word about Bret.

If you are going to publish a wine mag in the US to primarily a US audience, you should be required to taste for the US palate. This BS about "earth" does not convey Bret to me and I am going to be really pissed if my Pegau is rotten with Bret. The Spectator needs to start calling wineries on Bret and they have a responsibility to provide accurate, honest and US palate based reviews for us to read and utilize. Get yourself some new tasters if they cannot adjust their palates and keep saying Bret is okay. It is not, it is spoiled, spoiled, spoiled and quit bailing out the wineries so they will advertise in your rag magazine. My friends at Ridge recognized the problem and dealt with it. So should those jerkoffs in the EU.

I know that I should stop buying because of someone else's ratings in a wine publication. But come one, you have to look at the press because most of us do not have infinite amounts of money to use on wine. So we are stuck with the mags and they need to stop the bias and be honest with us. I would only hope that Matt Kramer, who seems to be the only non-biased real guy at that magazine, would agree with my crit. If not, screw the whole lot of them. I keep telling my wife I am going to cancel this rag, maybe I will. Who knows.

Ba Ba Barry have you any 'roids

2006-06-25T22:45:00.000-05:00

I have to cry for Barfy (Barry) Bonds. If you know me, I am an Oakland A fan. Bonds and his SF Giants were playing the A's today and his knee acted up and he had to leave the game in the first inning. WAAAA. I am so sorry that cheats like Bonds, Mark McGuire, Bret Boone, Jason Giambi,Gary Sheffield and all those other steroid shooting jerkoffs had to stop taking the 'roids and their bodies ended up falling apart. My wife had an excellent point, Bonds is probably going to use his knee as a reason to quietly retire rather than facing the appropriate questions regarding most of his homers, which were hit while he was cheating. C'mon, "my name is Barry Bonds and I gained 30 pounds of muscle, my face bloated like a dead body floating in the Everglades and I went from hitting 20-30 homers to 50+ homers per year I had no idea that my trainer was dosing me with steroids, HGH and every godawful drug to make me bigger, stronger, faster and hit a ball further than anyone". As Penn and Teller would say, "Bullshit".

Bonds should be suspended and his homeruns expunged. If there was an asterisk after Roger Maris' name in the record books, his should have a huge syringe full of steroid after it, assuming he is able to hit 756.

And I bet the cheating continues. Look at the Texas Rangers. You don't grow those kinds of bodies, especially in the heat of the Texas sun playing 162 games a year without taking something to augment what God give ya. The Rangers, to me, are just one of the teams I can point to that I would put money on that the continue to cheat, probably with HGH.

Now my A's, look at those pathetic bodies. Ain't no HGH there, nor steroids coursing through those bad bodies, as far as I can tell. Maybe some beer. I like bad bodies, got one myself. No question Bonds has maybe the quickest bat ever, at least as far back as we can remember. He probably would have hit a lot of those homers without the steroids...Which makes his transgressions all the more unforgivable. At the end of the day, I hope he gets his. But I tell you one thing. I wish Congress would spend their time reining in the Bushter, figuring out a plan for Iraq (including figuring out the best way to depart), investigating illegal wiretapping, financial record searchers, vote buying, illegal voter fraud, etc. instead of spending their time investigating the obvious and doing what...slapping someone's wrist. Pull MLB's anti-trust exemption to punish them, but quit wasting the taxpayers' money on this.